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As a local Labour activist, I understand the general wailing and gnashing of teeth that has beset the party after our drubbing in the local elections. But amid the panic about who should or shouldn’t resign, or what may or may not happen in three years’ time, I’d like to propose a philosophy that I’m calling “positive defeatism”.

For only the fourth time in a century, a Labour prime minister has won a general election with a large majority – with a mandate that takes us to July 2029. What if we stop worrying about a second term and just get on with making consequential changes in this term?

Here’s my list for starters: Locking in the great transition so that climate deniers can’t undo it; reducing the voting age to 16 so young people get a chance to vote for their future; and reforming party funding laws so that shadowy cryptocurrency barons can’t hijack our democracy. There are other priorities of course – cost of living, housing, inequality…

So let’s make the most of the time we have now. And who knows – we might just get that second term after all.
Mark Burton
Reading, Berkshire

• Isn’t it about time that politicians and journalists stop behaving as if the UK is run under a presidential system (Keir Starmer under pressure to agree exit plan after election mauling, 8 May)? We don’t need the chaos of a change of leader midterm, just for some senior Labour cabinet ministers to take action. How about four or five heavyweights coming up with two or three signature policies that would demonstrate vision, political courage, and bring about the change that ordinary people are looking for? Those figures then tell Keir Starmer that those changes are going to happen and that if he wants to remain prime minister, he can make the necessary announcements and take the credit. If he won’t, his time is up.

As a lifelong Labour voter, I am tired of reading about politics through the prism of personal ambition and backstabbing. It is time for real leadership.
Mary Rogers
Martock, Somerset

• I couldn’t agree more with Jason Okundaye’s analysis on the impact of distaste, even hatred, of Keir Starmer on some local election results (8 May). After 50 years of running the council in Barnsley, Labour has lost control to Reform UK. This despite doing a great job in rejuvenating the town in spite of austerity. Apparently many stated that they voted Reform because they don’t like Starmer.

They don’t understand that Barnsley has one of the highest economic growth rates in the country, is the first technology town in the country, has a completely transformed town centre with the second-highest footfall in Yorkshire, innovative health diagnostic and treatment facilities in the centre of town that are transforming healthcare, new libraries and state-of-the-art youth facilities. I could go on. Many of those achievements will be destroyed by Reform’s Doge-like policies and cost-cutting. I despair!
Phil Cole
Barnsley, South Yorkshire

• A “working class” man was interviewed by the BBC and asked why he’d voted Reform. His reply was: “Starmer’s done nothing for us.” Really? Has he heard of the hike in the minimum wage? If he’s a renter, has he heard of the vast improvement of the rights of private renters?

If he’d been asked “What’s Nigel Farage done for you?” he could have answered: “He got us out of Europe” (even though he wasn’t in government). And most experts agree that this has put a few percentage points on the cost of living and made the cost of a European holiday rise by at least the price of a passport. He’s also persuaded a fair proportion of the British population to suspect – even be hostile towards – immigrants.

If the British electorate don’t come to their senses come the general election, what further harm can he do? I hope and pray that we won’t find out.
Rev George Greenhough
Selby, Yorkshire

• The local election successes for Reform UK, particularly in areas that voted for Brexit like my home town of Sunderland, reminded me of the well-known psychology of cult members. When faced with the failure of cult leader predictions (the end of the world next Wednesday, the second coming, the rapture, untold riches etc), members often double down on their irrational beliefs, and cult membership can even increase.

Nigel Farage’s overblown claims for the positive benefits of Brexit and his alliance with Donald Trump should have resulted in electoral death, but instead seems to have spurred voters to back him further. Let us hope that sense prevails before the next general election.
Ian Henderson
Nottingham

• It would be interesting to see how many new Reform UK councillors recently held their seats representing other parties. One of our three ward councillors in Havering represented us as a Conservative until recently. Did she defect purely to hold her seat? Several others, as well as our Romford MP, sat as Tories until recently. Similar situations exist throughout the three countries. So the swing to Reform may not be all that it seems.
Ralph Gordon
Romford, London

• The outcome of the recent elections is likely to be a huge bonus to Labour. Over the next months, the people in council areas who backed the Reform UK candidates will discover just how terrible it can be when the totally inexperienced – politically and administratively – take over their communities, without a clue or insight into tried and tested political implementations. It will be a disaster, of course, and will bring a swing strongly back to Labour – with over a century of experience, government, public accountability, practical ideology and much more.

Also, it will clearly bring the Labour party together again as a united movement – with a willingness to understand and to respect differences of opinion within itself – after the recent and boringly repetitive parroting of phrases such as left, right, central, extremist, Corbynite and other facile jargon of little depth or perception.
Dr Ian Flintoff
Former Labour chair, parliamentary candidate and elected councillor

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